How Deep Are Your Roots?

Ephesians 3:17-21, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus …”

Isaiah 40:31, "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."

I woke up this morning feeling a bit sorry for myself concerning the ongoing struggle I am having with my health. As I do each morning when I wake up, I started to pray. But my prayer was not the usual prayer of thanksgiving, I was not glorifying or praising the name of Jesus, I was complaining about my circumstances.

As I continued to whine, these two verses from the book of Ephesians and Isaiah began to flood my mind. And then I felt the Lord speak and He asked me, “How deep are your roots?”

“Do you believe that my grace is enough, and that the power of the Holy Ghost that lives in you is enough, even if I do not heal you?”

“Don’t you know that even the most tattered tree, as long as it is living, no mattered how scarred or damaged, still bears fruit?”

I want to be fruitful. I want my life to bring glory to God. I desire His anointing and I know that it comes from being rooted and grounded in His love. I realized He was showing me that my strength comes from true prayer and worship and not whining, whining does not bring glory to Jesus.

All of us want to bear fruit, but if we do not stay connected to the tap root, Jesus, there can be no fruit. An artificial plant looks good to the eye, perhaps even better in some cases than the real thing. But the difference is that the real is not perfect, is always growing and changing. Sometimes it is beautiful and in full blossom, other times the weather has it looking tattered and weary, but it is still connected to the root, and has the potential to bear fruit – artificial plants look good but that’s about all they are, is good looking.

I do not want to be an artificial Christian! I was at one time in my life an artificial Christian. I looked good, talked right, and had all the appearance of being real, but there was no real fruit, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, in my life. A living plant will sooner or later bear fruit or die and the same goes for the believer.

The only way that I am going to experience the high places in God is to be rooted and grounded in the Love of Jesus. How can I praise and worship if there are no roots of love and reverence of the Lord? How can I pray if I have no roots of believing that God answers prayer? God was scolding me, “Where are your roots man of God, what makes you who you are?!”

And my answer was immediate, Jesus! Jesus is my taproot! And the Holy Ghost is the life giving source that flows in me, from Him, and to others!

My roots are found in Acts chapter two and the Day of Pentecost. Speaking in tongues through the baptism in the Holy Ghost. I have repented of my past sin, I have been born again, I have been washed in the water in the Name of Jesus, I am filled with the Holy Ghost, and the fruit that I bare:

I Corinthians 12:7-10

“But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues…”

Mark 16:17-18

“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”

If I want to soar into the future and reach the heights in God’s power and anointing, I must be well rooted and grounded. I must be on a firm foundation, and the only firm foundation, the rock on which I must stand, is the Word of God. All of it, not just the parts that I like.

Someday the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy is going to fall. Scientists travel yearly to measure the building’s slow descent. They report that the 179-foot tower moves about one-twentieth of an inch a year and is now 17 feet out of plumb. They further estimate that by the year 2020 the 810-year old tower will have leaned too far and will collapse. The word "Pisa" means "marshy land," which gives some clue as to why the tower began to lean even before it was completed, and the fact that it’s foundation is only 10 feet deep.

We must have a firm foundation. Without a foundation, our church and our lives will fall into ruin just as surely as the man who built his house upon the sand lost it all when the floods came and carried him away. Friends we need to be rooted, because the floods are coming. The devil will not cease to attack you in every way possible.

If we are going to stand against the flood, then we must be rooted and grounded in Jesus. As Pentecostals, we have some roots that we must stay connected to or we will lose the anointing and blessing of God. What are the roots of our faith?

The number one root is Jesus! He is the taproot from which every other root grows. He is our anchor in the time of a storm. His word and His spirit are the lifeblood of the church. His blood is our salvation. Without Jesus we nothing more than an artificial, dead, man-made religion with no power, no anointing and no life.

Another one of our roots is worshipping from the heart with lifted hands in praise and surrender to God. When we come to church and lift our voice in praise to God and lift our hands in praise to Him, it’s because we love him, reverence him, and desire to let Jesus know just how much we appreciate all that He has done and is doing for us. We lift our hands as a sign that we are trying to reach up to one who is higher than we are, and it is also a signal that we have surrendered to him.

If we don’t lift our hands, maybe we have quit trying to reach higher and we have begun to sink lower instead. If we don’t lift our hands, it could be a sign that we haven’t really surrendered our will to His will. If we can’t sing praises, even when we don’t feel like singing, then maybe it’s a sign that we don’t really love him.

Another root of Pentecostalism is Holiness and that includes holy living. God’s holy people don’t smoke Camels; they ride them. God’s holy people don’t cuss, and they don’t drink. Holiness people don’t look at trash on the Internet, and they don’t dress to please their flesh and be fashionable, they dress to be modest and please God.

Pentecostals don’t just read the Word of God and question all these things, we believe the Word of God and we obey it to the best of our ability, living it day by day as best we can. Believing in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and living a holy life are not Pentecostal doctrines, they are biblical doctrines that Pentecostals believe and live by.

In the old days, boys didn’t swim with girls, men didn’t wear short pants, believers didn’t go to school dances, ladies didn’t cut their hair, wear makeup, or dress like men – they were Cover Girls for the Book of Acts Church.. In Those days, men looked like men and left wearing ‘Buns’ to women.

Most people today, even Pentecostals call that kind of thing legalism. But it was not legalism that drove them to live a holy life, it was a desire to be more like Jesus. It wasn’t earning righteousness; it was the fruit of already being made righteous by the Blood of Christ! And God expects nothing less from His people today. Holiness never changes, it never goes out of style with God, and God’s people don’t conform their standards to fit society’s ‘norms.’

I’m not trying to put you under condemnation to some dress code or man-made rules of holiness. I’m trying to get you to understand that the more of the Love of God we have in us, and the closer we get to Jesus, the more we will want to be like him. That’s why we desire to live holy lives; not to show how righteous we are and how much more holy we are than the next person.

It’s not a question of “giving up” anything of this life. It’s a desire to gain something far greater in its place. We want to gain being as close to Jesus and as much like Jesus as we can because our love grows for him, and we are rooted in it. Those who refuse to change to be more like Jesus simply don’t have a relationship with Jesus, they don’t have enough of the love of Jesus in their heart, and their roots are in their flesh.

When Jesus comes in, darkness goes out, and as the darkness goes out, all the desire to do the deeds of darkness goes with it:

1 John 1:6-7,

"If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

“A holy life will make the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns; they just shine.” –

D.L. Moody.

We can’t scratch around in the dirt and filth of this world. We must mount up on wings of eagles, run and not be weary of well doing, and ever reach for the mark of the high calling in God through our “taproot’, Jesus Christ.

When we choose to stay connected to our Pentecostal heritage and the roots of our faith we will have the identity in Christ that we need, and we will have the power of God and the anointing of God upon our church, but we must realize that we will also become almost socially unacceptable.

When the church emerged from the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost, they were accused of being drunk. The world does not understand the “tongues of fire” given by the Holy Ghost, neither does it understand the “power of the anointing” of the Holy Ghost; and whatever the world doesn’t understand, it is afraid of.

We want to reach our community, and the world, for Jesus Christ. We want to win the youth, the children and their parents to Christ. Sometimes it’s a tug of war between holding on to our roots and doing things to grab their attention. We must never leave our roots.

I thank God for the roots of Pentecostalism. I thank God for the presence and the power of the Holy Ghost in my life that has saved me from drugs and alcohol and has kept me firmly on a foundation that cannot be shaken. I thank God for roots that I will teach my grandchildren so that by power of the Holy Ghost, they will never have to experience that kind of life!

Only one thing can bring people to their knees before the Cross of Christ and that thing is not our programs or our entertainment; it is the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost that speaks directly into their heart to convict them of sin and draw them to Jesus.